Expectations

Life was moving along fairly well, in fact very well considering what I was previously used to.  I now had my diploma, I had my three beautiful kids and a loving husband.  We were homeowners and we both had decent jobs.  However despite all of these things, there was a problem.  No matter how much we seemed to have, it never seemed to be enough to make me anything other than momentarily happy.  I look back on these years and like to think that we were happy and that I was a good wife, and to a certain point we were and I was.  Loving my husband was never a problem but it seemed seeing the truth was. 

I had a husband who loved me so much and was nothing short of amazing and yet he still wasn't enough.  All of these years, I longed to be in the exact place in life that I was.  I longed for this place because this was the place where my hurts were to be healed, my joy was to be restored and peace would enter in, yet for some reason this wasn't happening.  My expectations were not being fulfilled.  No matter how great my husband was I still found myself constantly aggravated with a desire to fight.  I suppose some of that may have been self protecting to push him away before he did me, but I believe it honestly was more me being mad because despite having the life I dreamed of I still wasn't happy.   

My husband was a saint, at least in my eyes, but I could be so mean and get so easily frustrated.  I constantly snapped and was overwhelmed all the time.  I developed this perfectionistic lifestyle where everything had to be just so, and having 3 young children in the house made that nothing short of impossible.  I basically was setting myself up to fail, I just didn't realize it.  I really believed that if I could perfect things then all would be well.  This could not have been farther from the truth.  There was no organizational skill, no body size, no amount of cleanliness that I could achieve that would help me find the contentment in life I was looking for.  The joy of perfection would last only a moment before I had to chase after it again. I was caught in a never ending cycle....hence all of my frustration.



In between, we really had some great moments.  Like I said, I had and still do have tremendous love for my husband and my children.  We've always played, vacationed and had fun together (well, at least until something made me upset).  Honestly, I believe  it was that tremendous love that we shared that always left me discontent.  Not because I didn't enjoy it but because I had a deep desperation for more of it.  I had such a great void and I so desired my husband to fill it.  The only problem was, he couldn't.

Our marriage continued for about 5 years and we went on many emotional rollercoasters. I continued to seek out more and more of my husband and my children trying in an attempt to fill that void in my life.  I kept hoping that a little would go a long way and yet it never did.  As quickly as I was filled, I was emptied.  In my search for more family time I even brought up the idea of going to church.  I thought it would be a great thing to go to church together and then enjoy lunch afterwards.  It would be a scheduled family day.  By now, I had well trained my husband to not rock the boat, so he got on board quickly.  As desperate as I was for him to love me more, he was equally desperate to do so.  In fact, he still is. 

So with that, we were off to church!